FAQs

Sometimes, things just go wrong. But there's usually an easy fix! Try our helpful guides below to see if we can answer your issue. If you can't find the answers you need, or are still experiencing issues with the website please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the Safety Thermometer team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

No - The Safety Thermometer is a free to use tool and you will never be charge for using it.

For the avoidance of doubt, NHS Trusts, NHS Foundation Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups; the NHS Commissioning Board; and the following organisations that provide services to the NHS: private hospitals, care homes and hospices in England; shall be entitled to use the Safety Thermometers free-of-charge, for the purpose of improving patient safety. All other parties must seek written permission from NHS Trust Development Authority operating as NHS Improvement before reproducing the Safety Thermometers

The subject will appear as “Invoice Number:” followed by a number. This email has not been sent by us. It is advised that you do NOT click any links in the email. Please delete the email with immediate effect. This has been reported to NHSmail. Users have also reported receiving this mail from other email addresses as well as our own. We urge you to remain vigilant and ensure you only open attachments from senders you trust. If you are unsure, or suspect an email you have received may not be genuine, we would recommend contacting your local IT team for further advice before following any links or opening any attachments.

Very easily! The process of getting your organisation set up and submitting can be done in a few minutes. If you wish to have your organisation set up in the ST, you would need to send an email toThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.with the following information:

We will then set up your organisation and you're ready to go! Please note, although it may appear blank, we will still have your previous submissions via the excel tool. By request we can back-load all of your previous data and wards to your organisation, but this may take some time - so don't panic that it's not there!

No. If you submit via the website, you will not need to send in a copy of your data to us.

As you are now on the website - once you have pressed save you are done. You don't need to export the file to send it in to us. After the submission deadline (Please check the Submission schedule for these dates) we will take a copy of the database and use that information to publish the data-set. By pressing the save button on the website, you have already 'submitted' your surveys to the database.

You can export a copy of the the records for your own use - but we would not need you to send those in.

Don't panic - it just means the server connection was briefly interrupted. Refresh the page (Press F5 on your keyboard) and the connection should re-establish itself. If it doesn't, you may need to close your web-browser and try again. Make sure to check your internet connectivity too!

If this keeps happening on your machine, you may want to check with your IT team if your system has the updated security certificates and readers. This can sometimes cause a problem in connectivity.

We have identified an issue with the date period that was previously used when calculating the number of patients/surveys included each month which is causing discrepancies among some of the figures reported. The charts on the website are generated from the “Collection date” that was submitted with the data item and that is used to group the data and display as months. We have found that this is different from the way that the data was previously updated and grouped into the excel tools. Previously the “Submission Dates” were used as the monthly cut off. This would mean that any data submitted early in the month would be counted against the previous month, which is counter-intuitive to how a monthly collection should work.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to see the current month's data until the data-set has been published. The submission deadline is usually the third Friday of the month (Please check the Classic submission schedule for the exact date), then we would expect the publishing process to take one week. This means that the data-set should be released within a fortnight of the submission deadline. If you have submitted via the website, then your data is available on the 'Analyse Data' tabs, however the harm free dashboards are generated from the published data set.

The NHS Safety Thermometer is included in the NHS Standard Contract under Schedule 6B; however, the decision on whether individual sites need to submit rests with their Commissioners. If your Commissioner has advised you that they are happy for you not to submit, please let us know and we will de-register your address on the system. It can always be registered again in the future, should you need to recommence submissions.